Café Philos: an internet café

Lately, I've come across a string of blogs written mostly by women in their twenties which focus on the author's sex lives. These authors write very openly about everything from how to give excellent oral sex to whether foursomes are more rewarding than threesomes. Judging from their blogrolls, there are quite a few such blogs, although I've only managed to read a half dozen or so. Still, that's enough blogs to get me wondering how such blogs could change our attitudes towards female sexuality if increasing numbers of women choose to blog honestly and openly about their sex lives.

It wasn't too many decades ago that women were widely assumed to have little or no real interest in sex. The prevailing notion was they participated in sex only to please their spouses. Either that, or they suffered from a psychological illness: nymphomania. Although some of that old view lingers with us, most folks today seem at least willing to admit women have sexual desires and needs.

When you get down to it, that's not much of an admission.

Yes, we admit women have sexual desires and needs, but we still largely think of those desires and needs as rather tame -- at least for "normal" women. Doesn't every woman, for instance, deeply want to convert her every sexual encounter into a long term meaningful relationship? Aren't women more timid and less experimental than men? Isn't there something profoundly wrong with any woman who can -- even at times -- find satisfaction in sex alone?

If more women start blogging about their sex lives, then we might seem some of those notions overturned. For the truth might well be that women have richer, more complex sexualities than men.

I smoke more at night. It may have something to do with the pull of the quiet, yet disconcerting neighborhood outside the front door. I like to watch it. Like to listen to it.
I sit out there until my eyes are dry and sore, listening to the night, and watching the dampness cling to alley cats and teen boys' bicycles.

I live in the kind of neighborhood that is infected with cats, by the way. It's hard to tell if they belong to people, or if they're strays. None of them wear collars, as a license for a cat in Calgary costs a fair bit, and I often get the impression that all the cats are just eating mice and garbage and milling around.

I consider the fact that I'm not much different, when you get down to it.

Later at night, these cats get bolder. They push their noses up against the screen of the kitchen window when I go to get a glass of milk, and sometimes one will jump into my lap when I'm smoking on the front step.

I'm always shocked at how cold suburban cats can be. The cats of my childhood, with their sun-soaking and warm dry noses, don't exist here. These cats are frozen and desperate. Their affection is really just a cry for help.

They skulk around the curving streets and schoolyards with wild, fiery eyes, like they were possessed or something. I don't mind. I let them rub their faces on me until they jump away, suddenly remembering where they were going before they saw me.

Sometimes I scratch their chins. They don't always know what to make of that.

I feel like I'm working in an African orphanage. Their innocence is skewed, and awkward to me.
But I can't resist caring for them.

On October 13, 2004, Andrea Mackris filed a lawsuit alleging that Bill O'Reilly had sexually harassed her over an extended period, including during periods when he was her boss at Fox News. If memory serves me, the suite was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money. But the papers filed with the New York court remain in the public domain. They can be found here. Below are some excepts from the court papers.

When Plaintiff responded that she never engaged in phone sex, Defendant BILL O'REILLY professed disbelief, and told her that the sexual stories he told were all based on his own experiences, such as when he received a massage in a cabana in Bali and the "little short brown woman" asked to see his penis and was "amazed." Defendant BILL O'REILLY then suggested that he tell Plaintiff the same sexual stories, which he knew she would "just love." Shocked and embarrassed, Plaintiff ANDREA MACKRIS informed Defendant in no uncertain terms that she was never experienced in nor interested in gaining experience in telephone sex. Defendant expressed disbelief.

[O'Reilly to Mackris, quote:] If you cross FOX NEWS CHANNEL, it's not just me, it's [FOX President] Roger Ailes who will go after you. I'm the street guy out front making loud noises about the issues, but Ailes operates behind the scenes, strategizes and makes things happen so that one day BAM! The person gets what's coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken, one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me.

[O'Reilly to Mackris, quote:] If any woman ever breathed a word I'll make her pay so dearly that she'll wish she'd never been born. I'll rake her through the mud, bring up things in her life and make her so miserable that she'll be destroyed. And besides, she wouldn't be able to afford the lawyers I can or endure it financially as long as I can. And nobody would believe her, it'd be her word against mine and who are they going to believe? Me or some unstable woman making outrageous accusations. They'd see her as some psycho, someone unstable. Besides, I'd never make the mistake of picking unstable crazy girls like that.

During the course of O'REILLY's telephone monologue on August 2, 2004, he suggested that Plaintiff ANDREA MACKRIS purchase a vibrator and name it, and that he had one "shaped like a cock with a little battery in it" that a woman had given him. It became apparent that Defendant was masturbating as he spoke. After he climaxed, Defendant O'REILLY said to Plaintiff: "I appreciate the fun phone call. You can have fun tonight. I'll appreciate it. I mean it.

[O'Reilly to Mackris, quote:]Well, if I took you down there then I'd want to take a shower with you right away, that would be the first thing I'd do ... yeah, we'd check into the room, and we would order up some room service and uh and you'd definitely get two wines into you as quickly as I could get into you I would get 'em into you ... maybe intravenously get those glasses of wine into you...

You would basically be in the shower and then I would come in and I'd join you and you would have your back to me and I would take that little loofa thing and kinda' soap up your back ... rub it all over you, get you to relax, hot water .... and um ... you know, you'd feel the tension drain out of you and uh you still would be with your back to me then I would kinda' put my arm -- it's one of those mitts those loofa mitts you know, so I got my hands in it ... and I would put it around front, kinda' rub your tummy a little bit with it, and then with my other hand I would start to massage your boobs, get your nipples really hard ... 'cuz I like that and you have really spectacular boobs....

So anyway I'd be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda' kissing your neck from behind ... and then I would take the other hand with the falafel (sic) thing and I'd put it on your pussy but you'd have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business...

During the course of Defendant BILL O'REILLY's sexual rant, it became clear that he was using a vibrator upon himself, and that he ejaculated.

In his public persona, Bill O'Reilly is arguably America's best known and most vocal prude. But if his former employee's charges have any validity at all, he is, like many prudes, a closet pervert.

Recently, the Economist Intelligence Unit created the Global Peace Index -- a ranking of countries according to their level of peacefulness.

It's hoped the Index will further the study of how the world can achieve peace. But the Index seems to have a major flaw: It does not track violence done to women and children. Hence, countries in which great violence is done towards women and children show up in the Index ranked deceptively high for "peacefulness".

From the Christian Science Monitor:

The first-ever study ranking countries according to their level of peacefulness, the Global Peace Index, was recently published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Sensibly, its basic premise is that "peace isn't just the absence of war; it's the absence of violence."

The index uses 24 indicators such as how many soldiers are killed, the level of violent crimes, and relations with neighboring countries.

Yet it fails to include the most prevalent form of global violence: violence against women and children, often in their own families. To put it mildly, this blind spot makes the index very inaccurate.

That certainly is "putting it mildly". Overall, violence towards women and children creates a "cycle of violence" in which the children tend to perpetuate violence towards others when they grow up. Two infamous cases where that happened were Hitler and Stalin -- both of whom grew up in violent households. It's hard to believe you can accurately measure the peacefulness of a society without taking into rigorous account the society's treatment of women and children.

If you're like Chiara (to the left) you've spent the early morning cleaning up your best suit -- your birthday suit -- in preparation for an exciting day of nude blogging.

But why is Chiara giggling?

Could it be because she's heard her exposed nipple is, even as we speak, destroying the very moral fabric of American society?

Certainly, that's what all too many Americans believe about exposed nipples. They believe nipples have powers more mysterious than those of Harry Potter and his gang. Powers such as a mysterious ability to destroy the moral fiber of anyone who spies one. Not to mention an equally mysterious ability to psychologically warp kids for life. And, worse, the mysterious ability to turn even the most decent American into a Democrat.

Never mind that most Europeans routinely survive the assault of nude nipples. Never mind that many Japanese practice coed bathing. Never mind that for most of our evolution, our species did not wear clothes. According to the morally insane, none of those things matter. All that matters to the morally insane is their fantastic belief that nudity is intrinsically corrupting of the human spirit and soul.

Yet, they are the ones in power. They are the ones who make the rules. And they are the ones who do such astoundingly "moral" things as prosecute grandmothers for taking photos of their granddaughters in underwear. Is that fair?

That's why you need to join the growing Nude Blogging Movement. Only by actually demonstrating that nudity does not lead to utter moral decay and devastation can we ever hope to take back this country from the morally insane among us. And the best way of demonstrating that truth -- the very best way -- is for millions of us to profess our allegiance to blogging in the nude on Mondays. Nude Blogging is a simple but powerful gesture that neither harms the environment nor allows the likes of moralists such as James Dobson to sleep well at nights. In both respects, it's perfect.

Here are a couple of commonly asked questions and concerns about the growing Nude Blogging Movement:

Q: I've noticed many people in my community have no problem with their kids witnessing gross violence, but are scandalized by simple nudity. Why is that?

A: Professional psychologists tell us the phenomena you describe is clinically called "moral insanity" or, in layman's terms, "Absolute Bonkers." Although it can have several causes, the most likely cause of moral insanity in this case is spending way too much time listening to bimbo talk show hosts explain how the world works to them.

Q: I'm from the South. What sort of make up should I wear while blogging in the nude?

A: Being a Southerner, you'll naturally want to wear full body make up while blogging in the nude. Begin with your feet and hose it on using an industrial spray paint outfit hooked up to your favorite cosmetics.

Remember to strike a blow for freedom from moral insanity this Monday -- blog in the nude!



Photo courtesy of DOMAI.

It quite often seems to me most of the world's popular ethical systems share a common assumption: Namely, that the primary task of an ethical system is to constrain human evil. I would suggest, however, that the primary task of an ethical system should not be to constrain human evil, but to promote human good.

Some years ago the executives at a large American corporation noticed that a vice-president in one of their subsidiaries was long overdue for a promotion. Wondering why that was so, they sent a friend of mine to investigate. After looking into the matter, my friend reported back to his fellow executives: "Charlie has an excellent track record of saving our subsidiary money, but he has done nothing in his career to make us money. He conserves wealth, but he does not create it." Everyone then understood why Charlie had not been promoted.

Ethical systems that are primarily concerned with constraining human evil are a bit like Charlie: They are focused on the negative, rather than on the positive. No matter how much they save us from evil, they do little or nothing to increase human good.

When we assume God is other than an experience -- such as when we assume God ontologically exists -- we take a step away from God and a step towards idolatry.

A short while ago, Decrepit Old Fool laid out a few principles on which to base a sexual morality. I think they're pretty good principles and will paraphrase them here with a bit of elaboration:

1) Meaningful Consent. Sex should not occur without meaningful consent. A person can give meaningful consent only if they (a) mentally and emotionally mature enough to give consent, (b) in possession of their senses, and (c) significantly aware of, or informed about, the possible consequences of their actions.

2) Meaningful Honesty. Closely related to the above, partners should be frank and honest with each other about their expectations. For instance, if one partner expects sex to lead to a long term relationship, and abhors casual sex, then that partner needs to inform the other of his or her expectations.

3) Diversity. A sound sexual ethic must allow for diversity in sexual practices, relationships, and orientations. The notion that only my preferred sexual practices, chosen relationships, and sexual orientation are valid ones is simply untenable.

4) Autonomy. Those not affected don’t get to decide what's ethical. This principle does not rule out intervening to prevent abuse -- since the abuse the abuse of one person in the community affects others in the community -- but it certainly rules out such nonsense as telling people they cannot use birth control or must always use the missionary position.

What do you make of those four principles? Could a decent sexual ethic be based on them? Are other principles needed too?

“Start doing what you like and you will have to work not a day in your life.”

- Confucius

I consider myself something of a feminist sympathizer. Within the last few years, though, I've often wondered whether feminism will survive the up and coming generations -- which according to some surveys I've read of in the popular press, largely consider feminism either to be irrelevant or to be detrimental to their interests.

So, I've wondered if feminism is wounded and perhaps dying? And if so, what wounded it? Or, will kill it? Any ideas you might have about that would be greatly appreciated by me.

If Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences is substantially true, then it is a myth that some people are in all possible ways smarter than most people.

Instead, someone might be more intelligent than most people in, say, one, two, or three kinds of intelligence, and average or even less intelligent than most people in the remaining kinds. And that would be about the best humans might do when it comes to being smarter than most of their fellows.

Yet, the simple notion that no one is smart in all the possible ways of being smart is far from simple to incorporate into how we see the world. That's because our culture is absolutely steeped in the competing notion that human intelligence is unitary (i.e. there is only one kind of human intelligence). For instance: The most popular measure of intelligence -- the IQ test -- is based on the assumption that intelligence is unitary. But so are many other ideas.

Indeed, when someone says to us, "Fricklethorp is smart", we do not typically ask, "In what way is Fricklethorp smart?" Rather, we assume that intelligence is unitary, that Fricklethorp is smart in the way anyone who is smart is smart. If we are to understand the theory of multiple intelligences, though, we must consider the possibility that Fricklethorp -- like everyone else -- is smarter in some ways than in other ways.

On a forum I frequent, one of the members has a post signature that states, "You have a moral duty to be intelligent". That statement makes little or no sense in light of the theory of multiple intelligences. It is, according to Gardner, quite unlikely that anyone is -- or even can be -- smart in all eight ways it is possible to be smart. To assert that people should be smart in all eight intelligences is therefore to hold people to an impossible standard. The signature is yet another example of how we simply assume in our culture that human intelligence is unitary.

One could list a thousand such examples. The point is, it is difficult to incorporate the theory of multiple intelligences into how we see people because we live in a world that almost universally assumes human intelligence is unitary. That assumption is made in everything from casual conversations to research papers. Yet, if the theory of multiple intelligences is true, that assumption is one of the most pervasive myths of our time.

Some time ago, the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner identified what he considers to be eight distinct kinds of human intelligence. His theory of multiple intelligences has taken root in the education community, where it is increasingly used to form various models for teaching. Yet, it's a fascinating theory in it's own right and I believe it has some predictive values which are largely unexplored. I intend to get into those predictions in some future posts. Here, I will simply offer one admittedly simplified list of Gardner's eight different kinds of intelligence:

From:

http://www.multi-intell.com/whatismiq.htm

PeopleSmart (interpersonal intelligence) involves the ability to work cooperatively in a group as well as the ability to communicate, verbally and non-verbally, with other people. It builds on the capacity to notice distinctions among others, for example, contrasts in moods, temperament, motivations, and intentions. In the more advanced forms of this intelligence one can literally “pass over” into another person's life context (that is, stand in their shoes, so to speak) and experience their intentions and desires. One can have genuine empathy for another’s feelings, fears, anticipations, and beliefs.

SelfSmart (intrapersonal intelligence) involves knowledge of the internal aspects of the self such as knowledge of feelings, the range of emotional responses, thinking processes, self-reflection, and a sense of or intuition about spiritual realities. Intrapersonal intelligence allows us to be conscious of our consciousness; that is, to step back from ourselves and watch ourselves as an outside observer does. Our self-identity and the ability to transcend the self are part of the functioning of this intelligence. SelfSmart is the most private and requires all other intelligence forms to express itself, such as language, art, music, dance, symbols, and interpersonal communication with others.

WordSmart(verbal-linguistic intelligence) is responsible for the production of language and all the complex possibilities that follow, including poetry, humor, grammar, metaphors, similes, abstract reasoning, symbolic thinking, and of course, the written word. Verbal-linguistic intelligence is awakened by the spoken word; by reading someone's ideas or poetry; and by writing one's own ideas, thoughts, or poetry

BodySmart (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence) is the ability to use the body to express emotion, to play a game, to communicate with others using "body language", or to create a new product. Our bodies are very wise. They know things our conscious minds don't and can't know in any other way. For example, if you had to lay out the keyboard of a computer on a piece of paper without moving your fingers, could you do it? Probably not. But your fingers know the keyboard without even pausing.

NatureSmart (NatureSmart (naturalist intelligence) is related to our recognition, appreciation, and understanding of the natural world around us. It involves such capacities as species discernment, the ability to recognize and classify various flora and fauna, and our knowledge of and communion with the natural world. You can see the naturalist intelligence when you find yourself drawn to and fascinated by animals and their behaviors. You see it when you notice the effect on your mood and sense of well-being when someone brings plants and-or cut flowers into an otherwise sterile, humanly-created environment. Think how often we head for nature when we want to relax, “unwind” or find inner renewal!

ImageSmart (visual-spatial intelligence) involves such activities as painting, drawing, and sculpture; navigation, mapmaking and architecture, and games such as chess (which requires the ability to visualize objects from different perspectives and angles). The key sensory base of this intelligence is the sense of sight, but it also involves the ability to form images and pictures in the mind. Our childhood daydreaming, when we pretended we could fly or that we were magical beings, or maybe that we were heroes-heroines in fabulous adventure stories used this intelligence to the hilt!

SoundSmart (musical-rhythmic intelligence) includes such capacities as the recognition and use of rhythmic and tonal patterns, and sensitivity to sounds from the environment, the human voice, and musical instruments. Many of us learned the alphabet through this intelligence and the “A-B-C song.” Of all forms of intelligence identified, the “consciousness altering” effect of music and rhythm on the brain is the greatest. Just think of how music can calm you when you are stressed, stimulate you when you're bored, and help you attain a steady rhythm in such things as typing and exercising. It has been used to inspire our religious beliefs, intensify national loyalties, and to express great loss or intense joy.

LogicSmart (logical-mathematical intelligence) is most often associated with what we call “scientific thinking.” Logical-mathematical intelligence is activated in situations requiring problem-solving or meeting a new challenge. This intelligence likewise involves the capacity to recognize patterns, to work with abstract symbols such as numbers and geometric shapes, and to discern relationships and-or see connections between separate and distinct pieces of information.

Different people have different mixes of those basic intelligences. Few people are exactly alike in their mix of intelligences. Gardner's model explains why people are often smart in some ways and not so smart in other ways.

To create his model, Gardner looked at a variety of evidence that people have multiple intelligences. But the most important evidence came from brain damaged people. Such people sometimes completely lack abilities in one kind of intelligence, but retain their full abilities in other kinds of intelligence. Gardner hypothesized that if human intelligence was unitary (i.e. if there was only one kind of human intelligence) that would not be the case. Instead, damage to the brain would lower overall intelligence, rather than leave some abilities intact while destroying others.

"If liberals hated America, they'd vote Republican."

- Anonymous

Concerning matters of spirituality, the profounder distinction is not between those who believe in God and those who don't, but rather between the mystic and the non-mystic. The former distinction is a matter of mere belief, the latter distinction is a matter of awareness.

Last night, I came across a string of Evangelical blogs as I was surfing the web. I spent a couple hours reading through recent posts on a half dozen of them and the one thing that most stood out to me was an account by a blogger of how Satan had attacked her.

The attack occurred a year ago. For two weeks, she was constantly beset by "negative thoughts and feelings towards God". Fortunately, a pastor intervened by blessing her ears while saying, "Protect these ears from Satan's lies". She immediately felt as if "a thousand pounds had been lifted from [her] shoulders" and fell to the ground. After that, the negative thoughts and feelings towards God were gone. She deemed it a miracle, and one of the people who commented on the event declared what happened to her "shows the awesome power of the Lord".

I'm struggling this morning to understand why such an event is of any spiritual importance to her at all.

I'm pretty sure she herself sees it as quite important evidence of the presence of God in her life and the "awesome" power of God over Satan. Yet, the way she describes it, this was not a radically transformative experience. There is nothing in the way she's written about the event that indicates it changed anything about her, other than perhaps a detail or two of her beliefs. It was not the sort of experience that I suspect Jesus once described as "being born again".

Near as I can figure, the only reason her experience was important to her is because she believes she will go to heaven and avoid hell by the firmness of her belief in God. Hence, the two weeks in which she doubted God were perceived by her as a threat of cosmic proportions. It must have been very frightening to her, those two weeks, and quite a relief when they were over.

Yet, does what happened to her reveal the "awesome" power of God? What happened to her took place entirely within ordinary awareness or consciousness. There is no indication from her story that at any moment during those two weeks she transcended ordinary awareness and experienced a radically different awareness of herself and the world. So, what really interests me here is that someone could struggle with the content of their ordinary consciousness (i.e. argue with themselves), then perceive that struggle as a cosmic battle of God versus Satan.

The more I think about it, the stranger it becomes.

This marks the 300th post to this blog.

If you are one of the lucky few who have read all 300 posts, please sign up here for your free ornamental bronzed kumquat from your friends at Café Philos.

You'll want to proudly display your bronzed 300 post kumquat on your fire place mantel to commemorate your glorious accomplishment. Or -- if you don't have a fire place mantel -- we suggest you display it on your bathroom toilet tank to remind you of this day and make visitors to your home envious of your good taste.

Each bronzed kumquat comes with a certificate of authenticity painstakingly photocopied from the original certificate, which shall be kept our offices.


Your 300 post commemorative kumquat is free and guaranteed to last a lifetime. Shipping and handling is a mere $295.00. Act today and order this amazing work of art that will unfortuantely last a lifetime!

Since the beginning of time we have shut out the people we really should have been listening to. The unhinged. Those with screws loose. The people who have lost somehow their barriers between real and imagined. People who have not forgotten how to see.

We shut them out and then we spend the rest of our lives straining to understand. Looking for a logical explanation.
We shouldn't go to church. We should go to psych wards once a week and find out once and for all that before they were drugged and shocked and locked away, these people in glass bubbles talking to themselves really were trying to say something.

Maybe not a whole lot of what they spout off is valid, but some of it might be.
Paranoia and incoherence are sometimes justified, is my point.

They sound like gibbering idiots to the closed mind, but anyone who is completely ready to take in reality is well on their way to being a gibbering idiot themselves.
If we were all like them, there would be no serious problems.

"How terrible to go through life just thinking about water contaminants and life after death!" My mother once exclaimed tearfully, and wrapped her arms around me.
"No," I thought to myself, "How terrible to live amongst war and pedophiles and terrorism and people with awful intentions for you, and to not even see it."

How terrible for everyone, to be blind to the bubbles in the water jug forming in beautiful chaos.
How terrible to not have a dead tree on top of your plasma screen TV, or your latest-model computer, or on the dash of your Subaru.
How terrible to wake up in the morning and need the proof of your consumption to make you feel alive in the least.
How terrible to desire anything more than a blanket and a window to pass your time with.

I hope that I am never so old, or poisoned, or abused to notice the shape my cigarette folds into in the ashtray. Or to relish in the beauty of unpleasant emotions. Or to dream while I'm awake.

And if I have to be crazy to hold onto that, then I'll be crazy, won't I?

For years, it's puzzled me that some people go from one abusive partner to the next and the next, always managing somehow to find an abusive partner and never much excited or interested in people who are unlikely to abuse them. I've thought there might be at least two possibilities why people would do that.

First, they might know no better. Most studies show that people who are abused in partner relationships were also abused as children. They grow up learning abuse is normal and to be expected. Humans are very good at adapting to circumstances -- no matter how heinous the circumstances -- but they aren't always nearly so good conceiving of a world radically different from the one they live in. A bit different, yes. But radically different, no.

Second, they might be comfortable with abuse and apprehensive of anything new. That would seem to be counter-intuitive, but humans can and do get comfortable with just about anything. Again, we're very good at adapting to circumstances. But once we've achieved some kind of skill in dealing with our circumstances, we are often loathe to move on to anything different.

Those two possibilities are merely speculative. I'm not claiming to understand why many people repeatedly find abusive partners. And I would be very interested if anyone reading this had an insight or two into that problem.

Is it possible for a religion to be "open source"? If so, would that be a good or bad thing?

Tonight I forfeited my enormous sigh of relief for some superficial comfort. In the middle of my catatonic fear, and my maddening limbo, I reached out to something I once abhorred for a touch of meaningless reassurance.

The past two months have been a mouthful of hell for me, and I would love to believe that it doesn't get much worse, but experience has taught me not to hope for that.
The loss of my son found me 30 pounds lighter and 10 years older in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. The loss of my immature fantasy that my lover was forever found me 4 hours away from him by commercial jet.
My inability to deny his phone calls, filled to the brim with imaginary sentiments, found me drowning in phone-bill debt.
The unjust accusations from my bitter family found me on my ass within a week, with half of what I'd managed to hold onto, and a sleep disorder beyond my most putrid nightmares. The torturous effort I made to understand what I had done to deserve such hateful, plastic affections left me with nothing else to do but kill time.
Lie around in my own sweat and agitation, wearing nothing but blankets, thinking and feeling as little as humanly possible. I was not hungry. I was not sleepy. I was not satisfied or awake, either. Just numb, content to acknowledge nothing... wonder about nothing.

An Aunt of mine took me in. Not to say there weren't some serious, threatening problems there as well. However, in plain fact, regardless of motive, she took me in when I had nowhere at all to go. She was a Jehovah's Witness, and I had taken some great pains to avoid the topic of anything religious in her household.
I should clarify that I am the epitome of agnosticism. I say the epitome because I haven't even the courage to explore what agnosticism means to me. I chose from the start not to dabble in faith of any kind, lacking the self-confidence to believe in anything at all, including my own existence. And so, I avoided the seemingly inevitable discussions of biblical morality that I imagined would be a part of my life with my Aunt.

I went to the first meeting at the Kingdom Hall that I was invited to. Mostly because I was lonely, and nervous of my loneliness. People at the meeting hugged me, and their smiles were far too large for me to take seriously. I was invited to a few more, and politely declined. Gradually, it was no longer an issue. I was more relieved than I could have imagined. I had seamlessly evaded the discomfort of clashing principles. Life, in that respect at least, was quiet, and without a carpet of eggshells.

The worst of the catatonia came. Nights seemed endless, mornings too short to revel in the 9 minutes a snooze button provided. Dreams plagued me, I awoke each day feeling more exhausted than I had been upon going to sleep. Food repulsive, air thick and heavy, my skin perpetually coated in a film of impurity. I had no choice but to remove the mirror from my bedroom. I couldn't stand to see how old and jaded I had become. It made me want to kill myself - something I hadn't considered in a long time.
The little jar containing my son's ashes sat beside my bed, a constant reminder of the beginning of this misery. Before the loss, life had not been perfect, not by far. Losing my child was the straw that broke the camel's back. Once the camel was down, of course, my world continued to beat it, crushing all of its bones and poking at it with various instruments of torture. Most mornings I wished the camel dead, thinking maybe this metaphorical conclusion would bring my downward spiral to a grinding halt.

Watching my Aunt plod off to bed tonight, I stopped her with a scratchy plea... “Please, tell me nothing horrible is happening to my baby. Tell me my faithlessness hasn't condemned him, or some shit like that.” I choked on the end of my sentence.
What was I doing? I had never cared about anyone's interpretations of the bible before, nor had I been easy to convince of religious 'facts'. I had not once turned to faith for comfort, it was meaningless. It held no personal depth for me, offered no breathing room for circumstantial adaptation. Turning to my Aunt, to find solace for my grief in the Good Book, was unlike me. Particularly when I had considered all discussion of faith with her to be a dangerous door which, once opened, could bring my serenity to ruin.

She paused in front of the closet, plucking a few clean towels from the hamper, and I weighed the pros and cons of jumping out the window before her reply came. Folding the towels, and stacking them on the top shelf, she said without skipping a beat, “Nothing bad is happening to him. There's no such thing as hell.” She looked up at me, scratching the side of her face and moving on to the washcloths. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you either. The bible says that Jehovah's punishment for sin is just death. Eternal suffering isn't real. I wouldn't lose sleep over it.”

She walked out to the kitchen and pulled a worn bible out from between two cookbooks. Opening it to a few pages and dog-earing them for me, she said I should read what was underlined at those parts. And with that, she rubbed my head and walked back down the hall.

I stood in the kitchen for an hour, sipping flat ginger ale right from the bottle. She had indeed underlined all the verses about the unrighteous, and I found nothing in them about burning or screaming for all eternity. I wondered how many other desperate people had turned to her bible as a last resort, and how many times she had looked up these verses for people before she thought to underline them, and knew where they were by heart.

Of course, I'm still not a bible-reader. Still not accepting that any man, dead or alive, knows the answers everyone seems to hunger for concerning life and death. It didn't change me at all, tonight's encounter. What it did was make me doubt my sanity enough that I could observe the situation, for what it was. Her reference to the scriptures, and her eagerness to settle my racing brain rather than jump at an opportunity to preach, offered a small condolence. More effective than the cross-eyed social worker at the hospital, or the pre-recorded hotline for grieving parents. Between my exasperation, which drove me to ask her in the first place, and her nonchalance in comforting me, I had been subdued for the rest of the week.

While it meant nothing to me, I was nakedly aware that I had asked her for assurance because my apathy and indecisiveness prevented me from giving it to myself. The occasion was so rare that I couldn't pep-talk myself out of despair. I had little experience with things I couldn't deliberately rationalize, and justify with impromptu logic. Not that I was driven to pursue a belief system of my own, but asking my Aunt for a glass of God before bed made it a little clearer to me, why people chose to build their lives around something so intangible.

I was given the chance to step back and watch what faith had given my Aunt. I was already aware that she seemed to be constantly struggling with a “What Would Jesus Do” that hung above her head. What I hadn't taken time to examine was the appeal it held for her.
As the bottle of ginger ale emptied, and my eyes grew heavy, it dawned on me that she had the passages underlined for herself. And she probably slept easy, every night.

“Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of a living soul.”

- Carl G. Jung

I think a good part of the American problem with sexuality is caused by good ol' envy.

Some people who aren't completely content with their own sex lives envy others theirs. And of those who envy, some seek to assuage their envy by attempting to put restrictions on the people they envy.

I think that might be why so many "moral" people eventually break down and have affairs with their secretaries, prostitutes, or the occasional goat. That is, their moral aversion to sex is not based on anything that's wrong with sex, but on envy -- so when they get a chance to grab some, they take it.

I don't think envy is the only factor that causes the American hysteria with all things sexual, but I think it plays into it in a big way. And I think it's a weak foundation on which to build one's sexual morality.

Nude Blogging Day!

I have no reason to believe in the ontological existence of God, but I have every reason to believe in the experience of "God" -- or whatever one wants to call a certain kind of mystical experience.

That's not quite so profound a statement as one might sometimes think. As any sophomore who has taken a course in philosophy knows, it is quite problematic to prove the ontological existence of anything, let alone deity. I can no more prove the ontological existence of God than I can prove the ontological existence of my friend Eryn. Yet, my experiences of "Eryn" exist regardless of whether Eryn herself ontologically exists. In the same way, experiences of "God" do happen to folks regardless of whether God ontologically exists or not.

That might raise an interesting question: If we cannot know whether God ontologically exists, then of what value are any experiences of "God"?

One way to answer that question is to stick with the parallel: If I cannot know whether Eryn ontologically exists, of what value are my experiences of Eryn? A short answer to that is my experiences of "Eryn" are valued by me regardless of whether I have any philosophical doubts that such an utterly fascinating person as Eryn could exist or not. The same can be said about any experiences of "God" I might have: The ontological existence of God simply has no impact on whether or not I value the experience of "God".

Yet, I can look at that same question -- what is the value of experiencing "God" in a wholly different light. That is, the experience of "God" seems transformative in ways that normal experience is not. In future posts, I might get into the ways in which experiencing "God" can transform us psychologically and spiritually. But here it is only important to note that the experience of "God" can be valued as a transformative experience even if no God ontologically exists. In a sense, that's really saying no more than I can enjoy the experience of talking with "Eryn" even if no Eryn ontologically exists.

So far as I myself am concerned, God only matters insofar as the experience of "God" matters.

The waters of American Christianity might not run as deep as one is sometimes led to believe.

In a poll by the Barna Group, 83% of Americans identified themselves as Christians, but only 49% said they were absolutely committed to Christianity. Based on that and other results from the study, David Kinnaman, president of the Group, concluded, "Most Americans do not have strong and clear beliefs [because] they lack a consistent and holistic understanding of their faith.”

I've long suspected something like that might be the case. The country's noisiest Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have significantly large followings, but their messages are not so much spiritual as political. Real "God fever" doesn't seem to exist nearly as much as, say, the politics of opposing gay marriage on nominal religious grounds.

It seems to me the more you politicalize religion, the less the followers of it feel the spirit, so to speak.

Good Afternoon,
I sit here blushing, as I was previously unaware that I had been mentioned here already. I'm Eryn Leigh, and the new contributer to this beautiful blog. In the spirit of tradition, I'll introduce myself with eight facts. As I believe the world is far too complicated to guess at, I have picked the eight things about myself that would be impossible to guess.

1) I did the majority of my growing up on the highway. I learned how to hitchhike at 13. I raised myself, and didn't do a horrible job at it, either.

2) I choose agnosticism as my label for my belief system, because I don't feel that I have the necessary experience or knowledge required to make statements about life's big questions.

3) I make a point of always wearing flowers in my hair.

4) I cling to a childish pipe-dream of one day being a well known photojournalist. Every so often I have a bit of a life crisis and apply to a half-dozen colleges, but haven't completed that program quite yet.

5) I don't think I am part of even one 'normal' relationship. Everyone I know is connected to me in some intense, chaotic way. It didn't take me very long to figure out that 'normal' and 'healthy' are not the same thing, and shouldn't be confused.

6) I live in Canada. I didn't always, and I expect I will leave when the time is right. For the time being, however, I am comfortable here.

7) I have one beautiful son, Sheridan, who is no longer living. People tell me they don't know how I must deal with the loss of my only child. My answer is always - I don't. When something like that happens, I think it changes people, without their permission, in just enough ways that they find peace with it.

8) Sometimes, I like to write short stories, or take challenging photographs, and staple them to trees and telephone poles, with my email address at the bottom, and see if anyone decides to comment. While I don't get many remarks, I have to say that each and every response I have received has been thought-provoking, at the very least.

Again, I look forward to being a part of this venture, and I hope that someone, somewhere, looks forward to my contribution as well.

I have cheerfully decided to expand by an order of magnitude the number of blogs I read each day. Thus, I'm looking for some good ones. Would anyone like to recommend a blog or two? "Please, mister, can I have some more?"

Before I even attempt to assuage your anxious hearts with triumphant dialogue concerning idealistic, political revolution, or those burning philosophical questions (which you undoubtedly already harbor answers to anyway), let me address the issue of my name.

Being "tagged", however, allows me little room for digression, having tried so hard, already, to win your attention through verbose and complex sentence structures, which may or may not be in vain, considering that they are indeed, verbose and complex, no doubt also maintaining...

ad infinitum.

The Eight Things You Wish You Knew About Me
(No really, you do. Trust me)

1) Currently residing in a small town in southern Michigan, about which its adolescent members spare no words in jesting about - "too white for its own good" (which it is) and "drug free" (Haha!).

2) This is the first blog I have ever posted on.

3) Am I Asian? No. I'm Indian. We have our own ocean and our own tectonic plate... and please, tell me the last time you confused a brown man for the Chinese.

4) I listen to music no one my age (plus or minus 30) knows exists - Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers.


5) What I find amazing about the Internet is its ability to unite people from social categorization that would divide them or otherwise prevent contact, primarily age groups. I'm probably younger than most of you, or at least Sunstone, but then, who isn't? (I mean, he has kids... :O)

6) Are you done reading yet?

7) If anyone asks me what I am doing tonight, see #8

8) The same thing I do every night, folks - try to take over the Internets.

I'm pleased to announce a new author has agreed to join us. His name is Musafir (pronounced mu-saa-fir), which means "passenger" in Hindi.

By way of inspiring him to introduce himself to you, I hereby tag him with the "Eight Random Things About Me" meme!

Please welcome him to the Café!

I'm willing to bet a year's supply of gourmet dog food against your oldest child that the article you will find here is among the very best personal story writing you have ever encountered on the net. There's no way I can loose, so please just pack up your kid without further complaint and send him or her to me to work at exploitative wages in my personal gold mines. My accountant thanks you.

Wondering what the human prospect is these days? You might get some factual insights on that by visiting Trinifar this week.

Trinifar has put together some beautiful graphs showing major ecological, demographic and economic trends in a post on "visualizing sustainability". He then briefly explains each graph in clear, non-technical terms.

Especially worth noting I think are the estimates that the world population of humans will reach 9 billion by 2050, while the maximum sustainable population is estimated between one and three billion. If anything even remotely like that occurs (and something remotely like that seems very likely) some environmental resources will be exhausted by the excess population, perhaps leading to a reduction in the number of people who can live on the earth in a sustainable fashion. That's just about the mildest effect such a disaster will have on the human prospect.

The effect of too many people and too few resources that concerns me most is political and spiritual. Huge numbers of people competing for diminishing resources is quite likely to lead to repressive societies. Then what happens? Will humanities' potential for authentic happiness ever be realized? Will most of us be able to appreciably develop our talents and skills, or stay true to ourselves? Or will only the tiny elite that controls the world's resources have decent lives?

I am reasonably confident that in the long run, the human spirit will rebound. But the long run could take centuries to be realized.

Growing up, I was frequently disappointed with humans. I expected them to be rational. Now I expect them to be irrational, and am instead sometimes pleasantly surprised.

My values have not changed. Merely my expectations. And my expectations did not change as a negative, hurt reaction against irrationality -- that might only have left me cynical and bitter about human irrationality. Instead, my expectations changed in a positive quest to be more realistic about our human nature. That quest has not left me cynical and bitter, but merely aware that things of beauty to me (such as rational thought) do not grow everywhere anymore than flowers grow everywhere.

An old adage goes, "There are two ways of being rich. The first is to have more money than you want. The latter is to have fewer wants than the money you have." In my expectations, I have largely embraced the latter. I emotionally expect -- i.e. I demand -- a little less than the world is willing to cheerfully give. That "trick" has made for a great deal of personal happiness.

Can everyone use the very same trick to achieve a bit of happiness? I don't expect so. The trick I've talked about here is not compatible with everyone's spiritual path, for some people take the path of the idealist. It seems to me a genuine idealist is someone who demands more from the world than the world is willing to cheerfully give. It has it's place, idealism, but it's mostly not my own path. I largely reserve my idealism for those few things I believe I can personally change.

"There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California."

- Edward Abbey





Quote thanks to May It Please the Court

Is there any idea so stupid that someone wouldn't believe it? If so, what idea is that, pray tell?

My motive for asking the question is not mere cynicism. I have a hunch there is no such thing as an idea so implausible that some charismatic soul couldn't sell it to a number of people as the gospel truth. I think human nature rules out little or nothing in what it will believe under the right circumstances. But I'm not completely sure about that. So, I ask.

Americans don't become adults until 40.

"Where 'that' and 'this' cease to be opposites, you'll find the hinge of Tao."

- Chuang Tzu

This blog will very soon become a joint venture between myself and Eryn Leigh. I'll let Eryn introduce herself, rather than say much about her here, but I think you will be very pleased with her writing and her perspectives. I'm extremely happy she has agreed to join me.

Kay, over at Songs Of Unforgetting, has kindly tagged me with the "Eight Random Facts About Me" meme. If and when you're tagged, you are to dutifully:

• Post eight random facts about yourself.
• Tag eight other bloggers.
  
• Post these rules.

So, here are my eight facts:

1) I paid my college room and board to study philosophy by fighting fires for the city.

2) I once owned and operated a small business with 13 employees, including my bimbo ex-secretary, who I was especially fond of, in part because she taught me -- better than anyone else -- that people with absolutely no intellectual interests could be lovely, wise and compassionate.

3) When I was 16, I hitchhiked around the Western United States, living on the streets of the cities I found myself in. At that time, I was one of four people I met who were 16 or younger. Nowadays, there are thousands of kids younger than 16 living on the streets.

4) I didn't figure out I'd married my first wife for her looks until after I was divorced -- the obvious often escapes me.

5) I was raised in a tiny Mid-Western American town of 2,500 people in which the dogs were allowed to vote in local elections on the theory they knew everyone in the community just as well as anyone.

6) My second marriage was to a brilliant, but abusive woman who herself had been abused as a child, and it created in me an intense interest in fighting against all manner of abuse.

7) At thirty-seven, I lost nearly everything I owned, including everything I'd built my self-identity on, and consequently discovered the art of dying. I haven't felt afraid of death since.

8) Apart from the seven things mentioned above, there is nothing else about me that could possibly interest anyone. That's the greatest tragedy of my life: I haven't enough personal stories to keep up my end of a good bar conversation -- a fact I feel compelled to compensate for by indulging in endless jokes about farts.

According to the rules, I should now pass this meme along, but I think I'll wait until later to do that. Thanks, Kay.

Only once in my life have I met someone so physically ugly I was repulsed, and it turned out that person did me a great act of kindness with no possibility of being rewarded for it.

I'm not sure I thoroughly care at what age women are typically the sexiest, but the question still amuses me enough to pose it this morning. Especially since silly American culture seems to insist that real women are not sexy -- rather, mere teens are. Fashion is driven by 16 year olds. So, at what age are women typically the sexiest?

My hunch is most of us will think first of the age at which women look the sexiest. Nothing wrong with that. The women who are held up to us as sexy are almost always women we know through the media, and the media emphasizes not only youth but looks too. So it's almost natural for us to think, "sexy = pimping good looks". But can we think outside that box?

In real life, isn't sexy, like charisma, most often associated with behavior rather than merely with appearances? And if that is true, shouldn't we take into account such things as the sexual confidence of women when asking the momentous question?

I've read psychologists who assert that around age 35 most women undergo a sea change in their attitudes towards sex. They gain vast sexual confidence. Let's suppose that's true. If so, would that explain why -- in real life -- a 30-something woman can often create in men more sexual excitement than her younger sisters? I don't know, but I'm tossing it out as a definite possibility, and my nomination for the typical age at which women are sexiest.

Of course, I don't mean to imply by any of this that women older or younger than 30-something cannot be drop dead sexy. Instead, I'm merely suggesting that women in their 30's tend to reach a sexual peak. There are exceptions to every rule. Besides, the real point of this exercise has been to question the common American notion that female sexiness belongs almost exclusively to teenagers. That's just silly.

“This is a valuable program with proven results..."

- Senator David Vitter on the Federal Government's abstinence only sexual education program.


As everyone knows, politicians seldom tell the truth. Why should they? Much of the electorate refuses to believe the truth and would resent -- perhaps even hate -- the politician who told it. I know all that.

But some lies still have a dizzying ability to floor me. Like Vitter's statement that abstinence only sexuality education (can it really be called "education"?) is "a valuable program with proven results." All the facts line up against that statement. Worse, abstinence only leads to irresponsible sex which leads to teen pregnancies which leads to abortion. It simply astounds me a person in a position of trust could spout the lie Senator Vitter did. Or, more precisely, the lie itself is what astounds me -- I pretty much expect our esteemed leaders to be liars.

Another lie that still has the power to floor me is the lie that gay marriages will destroy the sanctity of heterosexual marriages. That lie is just as fabricated as a Playmate's breasts. It has no sound evidence for it. Yet, there it stands, more popular with politicians and the public than a cable news car chase.

I could go on, but I'm genuinely curious to hear from you whether there are still any lies that yet have the power to astound you even in this age -- and if so, which lies are those?

"The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."

- Francis Bacon

The little girl to the left is a child beauty contestant from the film "Little Miss Sunshine". In filming the beauty contest scenes, "Little Miss Sunshine" forewent using actors and instead relied on girls who actually do compete in America's child beauty pageants.

You'll note the little girl is wearing over 17.3 pounds of makeup, has a sprayed on artificial tan and is dressed to appear sexy. From what I understand, that's all true to life. The girls in real pageants really are made up like that.

Now, I would think if you just had to have a contest in which you judged children's beauty, then you should judge their beauty as children -- not as fake adults. That's to say, I think kids are naturally beautiful as kids, and that dressing them up as sexy adults at best denatures their natural beauty. So, I wonder why anyone would do it?

What do you think?



My thanks to Eolake for inspiring this post.

"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children."


- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong."


- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As regular readers of Café Philos know all too well, we pride ourselves on pushing the boundaries of what an internet café does with its naturally vast resources of money and manpower. And unlike other internet cafés, we deliver. For instance, we were the first internet café to bring you full frontal gratuitous nudity. The first café to shun acceptable standards for English prose (see any of our 246 posts!). And the first café to accuse Bush of loosing the war. Well, now we've done it again!

In a remarkable first for any blog -- let alone an internet café -- we have become the first to conduct original scientific research!

Yup! You heard us right! Original scientific research! Today we're ready to publish for the first time anywhere the results of that research. Here it is:

We have spent the previous three months surveying a vast number of respondents about their sex lives, asking a variety of questions designed to elicit frank and honest answers. Questions such as, "Do you have a sex life?" "Is it any good?" And, "What color is it?" We are pleased to announce that our efforts have led us to a major scientific breakthrough such as is normally made only by highly trained and qualified scientists. Namely, we have discovered a remarkable statistic: Fully 100% of our respondents were virgins before the first time they had sex!

Those of you are not steeped as we are in the scientific method might not at first grasp the sheer novelty of this amazing discovery. In science, nothing ever, ever comes out 100%. It's always 63% or 79% or some other fraction of 100%. Yet, we've both checked and rechecked our raw data and, indeed, 100% of our respondents were virgins before the first time they had sex.

Furthermore, there is, in our professional opinion, only one logical conclusion to be drawn from that statistic: We have here absolute proof that virginity causes sex.

This is a scientific breakthrough of the first magnitude. One with remarkable implications for social policies and family planning. So far as we know, we're the first researchers to discover the cause for sex. But now that we've discovered it, we can safely say science has taken a huge leap forward. As has blogging.

Is there such as thing as a "fundamentalist atheist"? If so, what is a fundamentalist atheist?

Here are some posts from around the net that I've found especially interesting:

Trinifar reviews Paul Roberts' book, The End of Oil here. If you haven't read the book, you should at least do yourself the favor of reading this well written but brief review of it.

In this post, Decrepit Old Fool asks whether the infamous PZ Meyers of Science Blogs is "a jerk or a blow hard". If you've read any of Meyers' vicious attacks on religion and believers, you probably won't find it too one sided that DOF limits the poll choices to "jerk or blow hard." But if you have never read Meyers', then DOF's post is about as simple, truthful and direct an introduction as you will get to Meyers.

The Art Makers Blog has an article on Mark Jenkins' sculptures here. His creations are worth a look in part because they are entirely done out of scotch tape.

Mystic Wing has just begun a series on the notion that "God = Happiness". The first article is here. That's something of a radical notion. One hears "God is love", "God is Truth", and so forth but I don't recall anyone before this equating God with happiness.

Brendan, over at Off the Beaten Path, asks "Who Killed God". Perhaps the answer sheds some light on why so many deeply spiritual people refuse to affiliate themselves with religions these days -- or for that matter, with God.

At There's No One Driving the Plane, Marxsny has written an hilarious piece touching on Senator David Vitter. Vitter, you might recall, is the senator from Louisiana whose name recently turned up on the client list of a Washington madam.

Susan, at Hug the Monkey, has written a very nice article on how we model the people we love.

At Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed tackles the cynicism in the scientific community about altruism when discussing some recent studies of chimpanzees here.

Last, Michael Cole makes a strong case for introducing a very much needed new word into the English language here.

Do you trust your gut instincts? Should you? When have they been right? When have they been wrong?

What does it mean that "God is within us"?

An impressive body of social and political thought assumes that humans are fundamentally rugged individualists who once lived alone, each man or woman to himself or herself. At some point, they discovered they could accomplish more by working together than by working alone and, consequently, they created a social compact. Communities were then born.

What if none of that is true?

What if, as the scientists tell us, humans have always been social animals? What if there never was a social compact?

If humans have always been social animals our cherished belief that we live in groups for purely rational reasons can be questioned. Are our reasons for living in groups really that rational? Do we have "reasons" at all? Wouldn't it be more precise to speak of our instincts for living in groups? Or, of our nature for living in groups?

Social and political theory can no longer escape the fact we are a social animal by positing an imaginary age when we lived isolated and alone. Today it must be reconciled to what we know of our biology, among many other sciences. But that is by no means an easy thing to do. The question of what is human nature has many answers. At the very least, each relevant science has it's own models of human nature. Moreover, those models have moved well beyond simply stating that we are a social animal. Nowadays, scientists are modeling how, in what ways, and to what extent we are a social animal. And not just a social animal.

I recall coming across an article sometime ago in which the Vice-President was described as having a "Hobbesian" political philosophy. In an age of jets, the Vice-President flies a biplane. Perhaps that explains some of his many failings.

It is a mistake to confuse pity with compassion. We pity those we believe are in some way weak or helpless. In that respect, we condescend to pity. But we are compassionate towards those we consider equals.

When we pity ourselves, it leads to cynicism and bitterness.

When we pity others, we encourage them to pity themselves, leading to cynicism and bitterness.

A person who pities himself cannot be happy in his self-pity. But a person who is compassionate towards himself can be happy in his compassion, and is at least on the road to compassion for others.

Was Jesus too idealistic?

The other day, I asked that question on a religious forum. Predictably, one of the responses was, "Are we Judging Christ now?"

That's a lame response.

For one thing, very few people -- aside from such folks as my astute friends Mystic Wing and Brendan -- really object to judging Christ. Instead, those who pretend to object prefer only that no one judge Christ negatively. They have little problem with someone's judging Christ positively.

In the second place, judging Christ is not quite the same as judging Jesus. Among many other things, Christ is a symbol for the ineffable mystery within us. It is this about Christ that it is absurd of us to judge, for the ineffable is logically beyond any judgment. But Jesus is a symbol for a man who probably lived 2000 years ago and whose words and actions might to some extent be known to us. You can judge a man's words and actions even while refusing to reach anything but a tentative conclusion about him. Why do so few believers see that?


Let's return now to the question of whether Jesus was too idealistic. I myself think there is no certain answer to that question, mainly because we know so little about him. Most, perhaps even all, of the historic Jesus is lost to us. Yet, I don't suppose my answer to the question is the only light in which the question can be looked at. So, what do you think the answer is? Was Jesus too idealistic? How do you look at that?

The world is full of people who feel the morals of their society are in decline. This has always been so. I recall reading writings from ancient Egypt, from ancient Rome, and from ancient China all lamenting declining morals. And that's to say nothing of the ancient Jews -- who were perhaps the most lamenting of the ancient lamentors.

In some cases, such as that of ancient Rome, the society held together for 500 years after the author of the lament predicted its immanent doom. In other cases, such as that of ancient China, the society that was lamented about was on the very verge of blooming into a fabulous civilization. Those who lament the declining morals of their society don't have a good track record when it comes to predicting the demise of their society. But why is that?

Perhaps one reason might be that morals have very little to do with the rise and fall of societies. Another way of saying the same thing: There seem to be factors of greater importance than the morality of a society when it comes to determining whether a society will flourish. Economics, for one thing.

Beyond that, there's the problem that some morals might be in decline while others are on the rise. According to some studies, Americans are growing increasingly tolerant of lying. Yet those same Americans are increasingly intolerant of police brutality, racism, sexism, homophobia, child neglect, and so forth. So, overall, some morals in America are on the decline while others are on the rise. If we want to say the morals which are on the decline are more important to society's health than the morals which are on the rise, then we have to prove it.

I strongly suspect one reason people zero in on morality when discussing the rise and fall of civilizations is that just about everyone feels comfortable discussing morality. About anyone can think of themselves as expert in it. Nearly every real factor involved in the rise and fall of civilizations requires a sound education to understand. Morality doesn't. At least it doesn't require much of an education to pronounce, like James Dobson, that homosexual marriages will lead to the destruction of the family, and with the family, society. You can pass yourself off as wise, at least to fools, when saying stuff like that. Not so when talking about agricultural productivity and other factors which are most likely more important than morality here.

Someday, the lamentors will be right and our society will be in decline. Maybe that day has already come. But if it has, then it's come for reasons other than any perceived declined in societal morals.

What is it about the Harry Potter series that makes it so popular world wide?

I'm up late and thinking about God. After all, this is Colorado Springs -- there's not much else to do this time of night but think about God.

For some people, mostly mystics, the word "God" refers to a certain kind of experience.

Their meaning for the word "God" is somewhat at odds with what most people might mean by "God". For most people, "God" is not an experience, but instead an entity that exists independent of anyone's experience. That is, a being.

I sometimes think the two camps are a bit like folks who have traveled to France versus folks who have stayed home. The travelers think of France in light of their experiences. But the homebodies don't have any such experiences, and without any actual experience, they have no reality-check on their thoughts about France.

Perhaps the homebodies resort to reading maps to learn about France. That often seems to propel them headlong into very quaint arguments over which maps of France are true or not.

Quaint, because so often the arguments focus on such absurdities as whether it is more accurate to symbolize Paris with a dot or a circle, or on which map is the oldest and thus in some thoughtless sense "primal".

Most of the billion or so arguments about the nature of deity that this world has seen are not arguments between mystics -- mystics more or less tend to agree on the nature of deity. Instead they are remarkably petty arguments between non-mystics.

Whether or not the mystic's experience of "God" is of an entity that exists independent of the mystic herself is an interesting but ultimately trivial question. Of what final importance is it whether France exists independent of my experience? All that really matters to me is whether I can make reasonably accurate predictions about France. I need not assume the country exists independent of my experiences of it to do that -- although, it seems that by assuming such I can create the simplest possible model for predicting my experiences of it.

So, too, it's of little final importance whether anything -- including "God" -- exists independent of my experiencing it. All that really matters is whether I can make reasonably accurate predictions about my experiences of something -- including "God". It is just as feasible to model "God" as merely an experience as it is to model "God" as a being. Either model can predict with equal accuracy our experiences of "God".

Does any of that make sense, or should I have gotten some sleep before tackling the subject?

I've mentioned this before: All symbols -- including symbolic thought -- have the same relation to reality that a map has to its terrain.

Going a bit beyond that, I happen to think that all thought is symbolic. At least all thought about "things" is symbolic. And if that is true, then it follows we cannot think of a "thing" -- but only of a symbol of a "thing".

Or, to be more precise: since our thoughts of things are inevitably symbols, things themselves are the symbols we create. That's to say, one might argue reality itself does not have "thingness". Instead, we create "thingness" whenever we think about reality. What we are conscious of becomes a thing.

One practical implication of all this -- assuming any of it is true -- is that looking at "things" in this way is psychologically liberating.

When I have fully realized that my thoughts are to reality as a map is to its terrain, I am freed of mistaking the map (the symbol) for its terrain (for what it symbolizes). And that means I am much less likely to become wrapped up in identifying my self with this or that particular map or symbol. Or, to rephrase it, I am much less likely to become emotionally attached to a map or symbol.

In practice, that means I am much less likely to invest an inordinate amount of my time and energy into preserving the "purity" or "sanctity" of mere symbols. For instance, to the extent I realize the map is not the terrain, I am freed from the delusion that gay marriages will destroy the sanctity of my own marriage. I now see that delusion for what it is: a confusion of the map with the terrain. For the only thing that gay marriages will change is the map for the word "marriage". They will not in any way change the terrain or reality of marriage. Yet, this simple truth might have eluded me until I fully realized how my thoughts of such "things" as marriage were entirely symbolic.

Can anyone think of even a single goal the Coalition set out to achieve in Iraq that it has actually managed to achieve -- apart from toppling Saddam?

Which foods do you fervently believe are favorites of the Gods?

If you've read the sidebar before today, you've noticed a ghost. The ghost is Anne Riske.

Anne and I began this blog together as partners. Yet, she's only posted a couple times in the few months we've had the blog. That's because she has wisely focused on her education, rather than on writing for this blog. So, with her consent, I have reluctantly removed her name from the sidebar. May she graduate college with honors!

When I began writing this blog, I did not anticipate the need to take a vacation from it at times. Yet, I discovered after 200 or so consecutive posts that I felt dangerously close to running in a rut. Writing seems to demand a certain passion that is hard for me to maintain if I'm doing it every day. Hence, I took some time off from it.

This morning I feel refreshed and engaged again. Thank you to everyone who patiently waited out my absence.

Last Friday, my trusty computer encountered a software problem it could not for the life of it fathom. It's response was to lock itself into a sort of meaningless endless loop -- strangely reminiscent of the Bush policy in Iraq. Thus, after years of faithful service in the cause of inane writing, it died an ignoble death. C'est la vie.

I am now working on a "borrowed" computer. "Borrowed" must be placed in quotation marks because the computer I'm working on was found in the possession of a young woman whom I used to nanny when she was a young girl. She herself no longer has a use for this computer, having upgraded to a newer model, so she has graciously "loaned" it to me on an unconditional, permanent basis. All those years of taking her to the mall when she was too young to go alone finally paid off.

That's her in the cowboy hat. Isn't she beautiful? And what a reflective, thoughtful look! You just can't nanny a kid for a few years without coming to think they're one of the best kids on earth. At least, I can't.

Just for the record, I wrote the following for her when she was 12:

All I need is you today
And this morning's sun.
Show me now your silver dolphins
Then let's have some fun.

We'll go find some skates forgotten
And turn them into new.
Then we'll drink raspberry juice
And stay out past curfew.

Leah, won't you bite that woman
So I can speak with her
(Oh, nevermind, she's not the kind
To ever appreciate us).

Yes, I see the frozen dancer
Make of glass and gold:
But let's buy cigarettes --
I know just where they're sold.

My god you're strong when you're determined --
You dragged me half a block:
Just don't drop that dancer:
You know that's Aaron's job.

All I need is you today
And this morning's sun.
Show me now your silver dolphins
Then let's have some fun.


Fortunately, she's forgotten the bad poetry I inflicted on her -- otherwise she surely would not have given me this computer.